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Clean Cities Coachella Valley RegionClean Cities program advances the nation’s economic, environmental, and energy security by supporting local actions to reduce petroleum use in transportation. We offer free tools, data and technical assistance to help fleets implement and use alternative fuels. and advanced technology vehicles like hybrid and all electric vehicles.

News

11/25/2014

US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Electric Vehicle Community Readiness Updates

Does your employer offer charging for employees’ plug-in electric vehicles? Workplace charging offers numerous benefits to employers, such as demonstrating their industry leadership, providing a unique employee benefit, and increasing their environmental sustainability. This month, the Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) was pleased to make multiple announcements about the EV Everywhere Workplace Charging Challenge. In addition, VTO’s Clean Cities program also released a Notice of Intent for a potential Funding Opportunity Announcement.

Workplace Charging Reaches New Heights
Last Tuesday, the Workplace Charging Challenge held its first ever Summit, bringing together about 100 Partner partner organizations, ambassadors, and other interested stakeholders. At the Summit, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Assistant Secretary Dave Danielson announced the Challenge has signed up more than 150 partners, a vast increase from the original 13 partners less than two years ago. In addition to the partners, there are also 16 ambassador organizations, and numerous Clean Cities coalitions working to support and promote workplace charging. The newest ambassador is the Edison Electric Institute, which at a separate event at the White House announced an Employee Adoption and Education Initiative to encourage its member utilities to install electric vehicle charging for their employees.

At the Summit, the Challenge also released its first ever Workplace Charging Challenge Progress Update. Based on a survey of partners, the Update shows that Challenge partners are providing access to PEV charging stations for more than 600,000 employees at more than 300 worksites all across the country. These charging stations provide 6.7 million kWh annually, which saves more than 800,000 gallons of gasoline and 5.5 million pounds of GHG per year. That’s the equivalent of removing nearly 1,500 average cars from U.S. roads.

$100 million will benefit disadvantaged communities

Clean Cars
$116 million to support the highly successful Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP), which offers rebates directly to consumers who purchase zero-emission and near-zero-emission passenger cars.
Fuel-cell electric vehicles, which run on hydrogen, are now eligible for $5,000 per vehicle.

$9 million for pilot programs, such as car sharing, to help consumers in disadvantaged communities access new clean-vehicle technologies, and to provide emissions benefits where they are most needed.

Low Carbon Trucks and Buses
$85 million with a focus on freight for advanced technology heavy-duty vehicle and equipment deployments and demonstrations in

disadvantaged communities.
$10 million to $15 million in incentives for the purchase of heavy-duty hybrid and electric vehicles, such as delivery trucks.
$20 million to $25 million for large-scale pilot projects to provide robust demonstrations of zero-emission technologies in the freight and transit sectors.

$10 million for continued funding of the Truck Loan Assistance Program, which helps smaller truck fleets that have difficulty obtaining loans to upgrade their trucks. It provides enhanced credit assurance so small fleets can access loans for trucks with clean-diesel technologies.

Changes to the retirement-only portion of the program include:
Limiting the program to low-income residents, meeting the directive of SB 459 that EFMP focus on low-income participants.
Each vehicle to be scrapped must complete a Smog Check test to demonstrate (pass or fail) that it is road worthy and therefore retiring it will provide real air quality benefits.

A new air district administered retire-and-replace pilot program, offered in the South Coast and San Joaquin air basins, is set to launch later this year.

The program allows air districts the flexibility to address regional needs by piloting various approaches to the program.
Incentives will be offered on a sliding scale from as high as $4,500 toward the purchase of a used hybrid vehicle or other vehicle that gets at least 35 miles per gallon or other new or used plug-in hybrid. Plus, enhanced incentives, approved as part of the annual AQIP funding plan could provide additional financial assistance for the purchase of a replacement vehicle.

New Online Tool Provides State and Local Energy Data at Your Fingertips

June 26, 2014

Community Renewable Energy Deployment

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, with help from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has launched a new website that provides state and local decision makers easy access to a wealth of energy data specific to their location. The resources and data provided can be used to support strategic energy planning processes and deployment of clean energy projects.

By entering a city and state or zip code into the State and Local Energy Data (SLED) online tool, users can see how their current electricity prices compare to the state and national averages, learn about applicable policies and incentives that could affect clean energy projects in their state, find available renewable energy resources, get details on alternative transportation fuel costs, and much more—all in one location. SLED, which replaces the Community Renewable Energy Deployment Project Development tool, aggregates data from a wide variety of sources including the Energy Information Administration, the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency, the Alternative Fuels Data Center, and NREL.

Watch the SLED video for an overview of the tool as well as an example of how the City of Milwaukee anticipates leveraging it for future planning efforts.

June 14, 2014

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Clean Cities program funded 16 state programs as part of its Community Readiness and Planning for Plug-In Electric Vehicles and Charging Infrastructure awards, which totaled $8.5 million. The projects were envisioned as a way to streamline the further implementation of an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in communities around the country.

“As a department, we continue to have a really strong interest in communities becoming ready for electric plug-in vehicles, and, if they are ready, we want them to progress because there is a lot communities have to do,” said Linda Bluestein, the U.S. DOE’s national Clean Cities co-director.

The idea for the program stemmed from a 2010 public meeting where Bluestein and her team learned that certain communities were already creating partnerships and developing best practices to deal with the increase in EV production.

“But, this was only in certain areas of the country, and they were only at the beginning stages of planning. We wanted to move this forward because we saw that the floodgates were going to open and all these plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) were going to be on the market,” Bluestein explained. “The worst thing that could happen is a lack of knowledge by the dealer that sells them or by the consumer that wants to buy them or people that permit for home charger installations, or even vehicle maintenance.”

By combining the right education and the right best practices, Bluestein believed this would be something that communities could “sail past” and implement infrastructure and implementation.

“You want to advance the regulation and the codes in these areas so that best practices are put into place along the way,” Bluestein added.